1982-09-20 - Luray, VA - Unknown

While sight seeing upon the summit of Old Rag Mountain in the Shenadoah Mountains myself and a friend encounterd an individual that appeared to be Asian yet had Caucasian eyes. Slender in build and perhaps 52 inches tall. Mature in appearence yet without any secondary sex characterists of any kind. Dressed in a pale colored short sleaved shirt and green shorts. Light weight boots were noticed on its feet. The ears and nose appeared normal for a humanoid. The head was slighly larger in proportion to the thorax than would be normal yet was attractive in its shape. Dark brown hair covered the top and back giving it a receeding hairline appearence. We encounterd this personas we were leaving the rocky summit of this Mountain. There are only two trails that leave the summit and our backs were between the subject and the trail head. We had no prior warning of his approach to us and seemed to appear out of nowheare. He greeted us by asking the question, "What can you tell me about the flora and fauna here." I asked him to clairify what he wanted to know. " I want to know if there are Bears here and are they dangerous." I informed him that here are small Black Bears here but they are not aggressive towards humans in general. He responded, "Very good". His voice was normal sounding with no accent. He stuck us both to be a college professor or scientists in his questioning but had such a gross lack of basic knowledge about the woods that we both turned in surprise to talk about this person, made eye contact and then turned quickly back to talk more with him and he was gone. There was no possible way that he could have gotten out of sight of us so quickly as there is a very limited amount of room on the rock we were standing and it led directly to the trail behind him. In any event we ran around the top of the summit looking for him and then ran down the trail perhaps a quarter mile looking for him. We saw no sign of him. We existed the summit via the other trail and walked rapidly in hopes of findi! ng him t here but did not.

What seemed so strange about this encounter was that it took place on a very cool fall day, perhaps 40 degrees F. He was dressed for summer and seemed perfectly comfortable.

I not sure this officially qualifies for a close encounter of the third kind but I find it curious that this encounter has stayed so fresh in both of our minds 25 years later. He and I talk little as we live 2300 miles apart but when we do speak the first thing we say is "did you see what I saw." The answer continues to be "yes."